Reliability of Craniofacial Superimposition Using Three-Dimension Skull Model

• Daniel Gaudio ^[1] ; Lara Olivieri ^[1] ; Danilo De Angelis ^[1] ; Pasquale Poppa ^[1] ; Andrea Galassi ^[2] ; Cristina Cattaneo ^[1]
  1. [1] University of Milan

     University of Milan

     Milán, Italia

     
  2. [2] ULSS 6 UOS di medicina Legale Vicenza Italy
• Localización: Journal of forensic sciences, ISSN-e 1556-4029, ISSN 0022-1198, Vol. 61, Nº. 1, 2016, págs. 5-11
• Idioma: inglés
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• Resumen

  • Craniofacial superimposition is a technique potentially useful for the identification of unidentified human remains if a photo of the missing person is available. We have tested the reliability of the 2D-3D computer-aided nonautomatic superimposition techniques. Three- dimension laser scans of five skulls and ten photographs were overlaid with an imaging software. The resulting superimpositions were evaluated using three methods: craniofacial landmarks, morphological features, and a combination of the two. A 3D model of each skull without its mandible was tested for superimposition; we also evaluated whether separating skulls by sex would increase correct identifications. Results show that the landmark method employing the entire skull is the more reliable one (5/5 correct identifications, 40% false positives [FP]), regardless of sex. However, the persistence of a high percentage of FP in all the methods evaluated indicates that these methods are unreliable for positive identification although the landmark-only method could be useful for exclusion.